Everyday Drinking_ The Distilled Kingsley Amis - Kingsley Amis [22]
I say, the future is a serious matter;
But now, for God’s sake, hock and soda-water!
—LORD BYRON
FURTHER THOUGHTS ON WINE*
FOR THE MAN whose curiosity on the subject has not been totally assuaged by the foregoing.
1. Make up your mind to drink wine in quantity. I am not exactly advising you to add three bottles of vintage claret to your normal daily intake, but even when drunk to excess, wine has less severe short-term and long-term effects on your condition than an excess of spirits or fortified wines (sherry, port). Unless you are uncontrollably rich, in which case you are probably not deigning to read this, try the cheap table wines from France, Spain, Portugal or Austria that are sold under brand names in every off-licence. They are carefully blended to ensure that their taste and general standard remain constant, and are an excellent basis from which to start your more ambitious forays into the vintages. Shop around until you find one you really go for, but carry on shopping around after that.
2. Also shop around under your wine merchant’s auspices.
Ask him to make up an assorted case for you—two bottles each of six different wines is better than one each of a dozen—and tell him whether you prefer dry or sweet, light or heavy, cheap or not so cheap. Repeat the treatment ad libitum.
3. Join a wine club. There are plenty of these springing up; there might be one in your area; your wine merchant might be able to recommend one. You may even find a course on wine being given by your local night school, especially in London under the G.L.C.
4. On the principle of not barking yourself if you keep a dog, test out the wine waiter whenever you eat in a restaurant, as follows. If he wears a little silver badge in his lapel, he is a member of the Guild of Sommeliers (cellarmen), and you stand a chance. If, asked what he recommends, he shows no interest in what you are eating, or refers to a wine merely by its number on the list, consign him to hell either silently or aloud, according to taste. If, requested to fetch a Pommard 1966 domaine-bottled, he leans over to see where you are pointing and says, “Ah yes, a bottle of Number 65—that is very good,” he is no less of a villain, for he has shown he does not even know his way round his cellar, let alone have any idea of what is good or not so good in it. If he passes so far, and if you are in a tolerant, unexacting frame of mind, you may let him guide you. But if he then brings you something that you think is either ordinary at a high price or nasty at any, tell him so and make him sample it himself. This will take him down a satisfying peg, however hotly he may protest on tasting that the wine is first-rate, and he might even—who knows?—try a little harder next time. If you want to cut out all fuss and argument, simply ask for a carafe of the house hock, claret or whatever. This, without necessarily being very good to drink, will always be good value, because the management must both keep its price down and see to it that it remains at a consistent not-bad level. And if, of course, you want to put the wine waiter down, study the wine list long and carefully before handing it back with a smiling shake of the head and ordering your carafe: a hefty implication that either they have nothing up to the standard you and your guests expect, which is conceivable, or they are charging too much for their listed wines, which is quite likely.
5. Follow the advice of wine merchants, wine clubs, wine waiters, even wine journalists, but never forget that your own taste is the final judge. Like the solicitor who keeps his clientèle safely under sedation by the use of fanciful legal jargon—did you know that any fool can do his own conveyancing, i.e. legally transfer property between himself and another?—so the wine snob, the so-called expert and the jealous wine merchant (there are a few) will conspire to persuade you that the subject is too mysterious for the plain man to penetrate without continuous assistance. This is, to put it politely, disingenuous flummery. It is